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I was pretty high on Mazara at the beginning of the year, maybe too high. He's made some small progress this year, his walk rate and ISO are up and he's hitting more flyballs. He still has another 100 or so ABs to turn it on and he's just 22. One of these days I figure he is bound to go off and hit a bunch of homers.

The AL West is serving as a great reminder of how long the season is with the Rangers and Angels both threatening for a playoff spot.

I was pretty high on Mazara at the beginning of the year, maybe too high. He's made some small progress this year, his walk rate and ISO are up and he's hitting more flyballs. He still has another 100 or so ABs to turn it on and he's just 22. One of these days I figure he is bound to go off and hit a bunch of homers.

I'm still concerned about him. It's taken a recent hot streak to get his numbers just slightly better than what they were last year, and while he's really young, you'd like to see more significant improvement than that.

Jeff Banister has tinkered with his lineup this week, dropping Mazara to fifth after three guys who get on base a bit (Choo, Andrus, Beltre) and following him with Joey Gallo. Lineup order may not matter much, but one effect was to get Napoli and Odor, who do nothing except hit the occasional home run, out of the middle of the order and down near the bottom. Mazara has nine RBI in the three games since he moved to fifth, and Gallo actually drove in somebody else on a HR for once in his life (Mazara, naturally).

I made the classic amateur's mistake of watching Mazara play a few times when he was really hot and getting too excited about him. He does have a beautiful lefty swing and when he gets into one he can really hit it a long way. But he doesn't control the strikezone and, as noted above, he hasn't developed much since last season.

My instinct is to say I still think he can become a good player. But the truth is that I don't know anything about that sort of thing.

I made the classic amateur's mistake of watching Mazara play a few times when he was really hot and getting too excited about him. He does have a beautiful lefty swing and when he gets into one he can really hit it a long way.

He's one of those guys scouts fall in love with and it's easy to see why. The swing is so smooth, he can generate a ton of power, his throwing arm is super strong, but the results just aren't there. He's only 22, so still time for him to figure things out, but if he doesn't show significant improvement in 2018 his future becomes more cloudy.

Is Gallo's recent hot streak just random noise, or does he appear to have changed his swing/approach?

I don't see him doing anything differently. He may have run into a mistake-prone run of pitchers, or as you say just happened to see a handful of pitches he could really turn on.

Gallo, of course, is not like Odor, who has no concept of the strike zone. Gallo strikes out a preposterous amount, but he strikes out on strikes. So pitchers need to throw him strikes, and when they miss in the zone, toward the middle or inner half of the plate, the results are dramatic.

I don't see him doing anything differently. He may have run into a mistake-prone run of pitchers, or as you say just happened to see a handful of pitches he could really turn on.

Fair enough. A guy with his power is going to have periods where he hits bunches of HRs and I guess we just saw one.

Gallo, of course, is not like Odor, who has no concept of the strike zone. Gallo strikes out a preposterous amount, but he strikes out on strikes. So pitchers need to throw him strikes, and when they miss in the zone, toward the middle or inner half of the plate, the results are dramatic.

Yeah, that's why I'm optimistic on Gallo being a good player despite the strike outs and the low average; you can't just throw him sliders way off the plate over and over again and expect him to get himself out. At some point you gotta come into the strike zone and while he's a guy you can pitch to, there's not much margin for error.

I saw a couple of Mazara games last year and got pretty excited too. Sammy Sosa sprung to mind -- not so much in a brilliant analytical way but in that I saw a few Sosa games back when he was 20-21 and he was a mess but his potential was obvious, so I always think of Sosa when I see fast, strong (for their size), sloppy, very young players. (Of course I also think of Dunston ... and Patterson and ....)

On the one hand, his age-22 season resembles JUpton's age-22 season. On the other hand, Upton was much better at 20-21 so that's probably a realistic upside comp. He's been better than Gregory Polanco at the same ages so maybe that's a downside comp (it's a bit hig for a downside but whatever). I suppose it's a good sign that he hasn't had a period of struggling so badly that he's had to be sent down. It's probably a bit troubling that even in his youthful vigor stage, the defense is no better than average and he's got negative Rbase -- that suggests the bat will need to improve substantially if he's going to have much of a career.

There ya go -- his age 21-22 is a very close match to Jay Bruce 21-22. Bruce took a big step up with the bat at 23 and also tossed in a couple of good defense years (and some not so good) ... still timing has to be right to parlay that into a 10+ year career.